Curiosity’s Wager 10: What should we become able to do together?
Part 10 of 10 in Curiosity’s Wager.
I want to return to Curiosity's wager with three points. We can change these arrangements. Participating changes us, and we need others to help us judge and shape both. First, we can change the arrangements. What gets delegated? What becomes visible? Who can contest a result? And who decides?
Refusal and alternatives remain possible. The time, place, and manner in which these tools are used, how they're developed, and who participates are matters people can contest and reshape. Our power to do that is unequal. But what these tools will become isn't preordained. We can shape them and how we talk about them. Second, practice changes us. Using these tools, designing them and talking with others can change what we understand, notice and become able to do for better or worse.
Returning to Pascal, as we endeavor, we change.
What are we cultivating through our repeated actions? Understanding, judgment, curiosity, or habitual acceptance and hubris? Third, finally, we need others. Shared curiosity is part of how we change an arrangement, how we examine our own practice, how we become. That is demanding. These questions cross different kinds of expertise, experience, and responsibilities. Answers will differ across places and situations. Confronting differences in understanding and position can be difficult. It asks more of me than sharing something I'm excited about.
Preparing this talk has itself been valuable. Explaining my work, questioning the examples, and anticipating what you might see differently has helped me examine what I'm doing. This is a practice I want to pursue better and do more of. I want other people's questions and concerns to be able to change my understanding and direction.
Curiosity doesn't itself establish permission, adequately redistribute power, or make a system safe. Asking questions can be an essential act and a contribution in itself. It can also reveal other actions we need to take and other places we need to engage. What do you see that I've missed? What would you want to protect or make possible? And what should we help one another become able to do?
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